Epaka

I think it could be great news! Dark Horse did some amazing work through the years, but starting with their abysmal and ill-conceived ‘Queen of the Black Coast’ series the main Conan title has been quite weak. That doesn’t include the Truman/Giorello King Conan mini-series, which were all stellar. ‘Avenger’ had better writing than Woods’ terrible QofTBC, but had some of the worst Conan art ever committed to paper. ‘Slayer’ has been a step in the right direction, but I think that Conan in comic book form really needs a refresh. I’m hopeful that Marvel is going to do it justice. As long as it isn’t a watered-down, politically correct, PG-rated effort, it could be great! I feel bad for Dark Horse in a way. Losing Star Wars and now Conan doesn’t leave them with many A+ titles.

Baal’s out! Looks great NQD. Here’s my offering, as usual just generally painting according to the game art. He’s hanging it all out with Pelias in the only pic I have handy.

I’ve been living with the scratches so far. But now, I’ve found a nice solution. Buy a cheap bag of small rubber bands that are available in multiple colors. Instead of using the colored plastic bases, just wrap the appropriately colored rubber bands around the base of the minis as needed in any given scenario. Problem solved!

Excellent news! I’m really glad I happened to check in here as I’m overseas in Taiwan right now - and I will be in Indonesia/Bali when the email goes out. I’ll hopefully have no problems receiving the email when it is sent, but I’m not sure about how we will be paying for the shipping, and how long we have to do so? Really don’t want to miss this!! @Matt John S @SentMa

A little touch up needed, but can’t wait to get him on the table this week!!

Another rapid-fire paint job. Along with the Black Dragons, and the Black Ones, I finished 25 minis in 2 evenings. If I can keep at it, I might have my King Pledge and all the Add-Ons done soon. Then I can finally start on the 3 big expansions...

Kinda tore through this paint job... Not making art like some of you painting maestros, but good enough for my board!

@Odolontres: Well, if I kept track of all the Conan sessions my group has played from day 1, which would include a ton of rounds that we played incorrectly for one reason or another, my statistics would be all over the place. Also, did you read that's entire thread? Crunching those numbers as a whole computes to 57% chance of Heroes wining, with 95% confidence. Which basically means very good balance. Even among the anecdotal evidence of the other posts on that thread there is a great deal of disagreements about results, and examples of people playing incorrectly. There is no way to determine, from such a tiny data set, that the game is unbalanced, or that any given scenario is broken... For my part, also anecdotal, I'm just noting a recent trend towards Hero wins. Generally my group can point to one given moment, or bad decision, on the part of the OL that meant a loss for him. I stand by my assertion (and @Matt John S), that no particular scenario is truly broken. Further, I stand by my assessment that the OL needs to play very shrewdly with experienced Heroes, and that the OL has less margin for error. What has your experience been? Is there a scenario that you find to be 'broken'? EDIT: I suppose we are off topic now... Mods? To bring it all back I'd just add, Red Nails is crushing it, whoot!

Agreed @Footballzs... And, as I pointed out, it makes no sense. How would the OL know when they have won? Or, do we play until the end of the 8th round and then find out who won?.... I say again, great game but a little more clarification in most of the published scenarios would be appreciated.

Thanks @Matt John S.... One of those answers seems very confusing though; if the Overlord is not even allowed to look at the value of the gold bags/chests that they have acquired, how will they know when they get enough to achieve victory??? The OL needs gold bags with a total value of 9. 13 bags are used in the scenario with their value hidden and randomized. Since 4 of the bags are worth 2, and 9 are worth 1, this means that the OL could win with as little as 5 bags (4 of the bags valued at 2, and 1 of the bags valued at 1), or, if he’s unlucky and never happens to collect any of the 2 value bags, the OL might need to collect 9 bags. We will continue to house-rule the way we did; the OL can look at the bag values, and the heroes cannot. This is more logical, and also ramps up the tension for the Heroes as they don’t know how many more bags the OL needs before achieving victory... Ugh... by Crom, such a fantastic game with so many sloppily written scenarios leading to way too many gameplay questions... I still love it, but it’s also been very frustrating time and again. Meh, that’s why Mitra created House-Rules I suppose!... :)

Thanks @Footballzs! So, the heroes CAN see how much gold the OL has accrued, huh?... Well, not knowing these answers when we last played the level we house ruled according to logic. We played that the Hyenas could not carry gold, that only the OL knew how much gold he/she had acquired (which really ramped up the tension for the heroes), and that the OL could pass gold through the windows (I mean, if you can throw a spear or sword or axe through the window as part of a ranged attack, it makes sense that you can pass a bag of gold)... At any rate, once again, the Heroes won the scenario. For us anyways, now that we know how to play the game really well, the OL almost never wins anymore. The OL must play nearly perfect and be incredibly shrewd to win. Scenarios that we once thought were weighted towards an OL win do not feel that way anymore, with heroes taking more than 90% of the wins in our last 30+ games. This actually seems fine to us as it makes sense, in a pulp fiction way, that the heroes will generally take the victory. It makes OL victories awfully sweet these days. :)

Voted for Red Nails. I'd love to see more elements of that story in game form (including a better dragon), but I also just feel that a game board depicting any kind of ancient 'lost city' is definitely needed for this game. However, we could also use a true wilderness setting (the Pict village is fairly close but not right for some potential REH base scenarios), and yes, a full-on Hyborian Western Kingdom city setting would be nice too. 100% AGREE that there are NOT any truly broken scenarios. Many of the complaints of 'broken' scenarios on BGG were absolutely the result of people not understanding the gameplay rules, or completely missing the possible/necessary application of useful skills, etc. There are, however, many scenarios which could use more details in the description which could help cut down on gameplay questions. In some cases, there are some glaring questions that seem so completely obvious that it's hard to believe the scenarios were playtested and nobody saw that clarification would be needed before publishing. I can always house-rule my way through, but c'mon! As an example, I posted some simple questions for the Tranicos scenario recently on this forum that seem like no-brainers.... Still haven't heard anything back from our mods, but hopeful I will eventually... 😬

Wow! Just looked at this scenario and it looks very interesting! We will give it a run at the next game night and let you know how it goes...

Can’t wait to get my copy! Clever folks at Monolith. Really the main reason I pledged for Mythic Battles was to get this expansion, and to have more boards, minis, and scenarios for Conan. MB appealed to me as well, and now I’m really excited to get that to the gaming table... whenever I have it painted, of course.

Since Halloween I've been playing Elder Signs with my girlfriend quite a bit... We up the atmosphere by cranking soundtracks from John Carpenter and Dario Argento films while we fight to contain the Great Old Ones! Here's a look at the custom game-mat that I put together to organize this great little game:

We finally played this scenario, and as with most scenarios, there were at least a few questions that were not answered in the description: - Can Hyenas carry gold, or be considered as part of the ‘Human Chain’? - Is the OL allowed to look at the value amount of the gold bag/treasure chest tokens that he has moved off the board? Does he keep that amount hidden from Heroes? - As part of the 'Human Chain' event, can the Overlord's units pass the gold bags/chests through the windows of the cellars - as they are adjacent areas with LOS? Official clarification would be awesome. @SentMa, @Matt John S?

OL vs. OL is all I've heard of as well. I have to give a shoutout to @Matt John S, who authored a Conan board game crossover book for the Modipius RPG. I haven't seen it yet, but I understand that it contains a solo and cooperative mode.

I have no idea to be honest. Monolith knows that there is some demand, but they haven’t made any indication either way yet...

I can’t wait for my Book of Set to arrive! I haven’t been factoring that into my scenario counts on this topic... I’m also excited to eventually receive the Modiphius crossover and tiles, but I have no idea when that will be shipping out to me, I don’t think that they have announced when Wave 2 shipping happens. I haven’t painted the Sabretooth yet, so I took another look at the mini (which I primed awhile ago), it is indeed a nice enough looking sculpt. It’s certainly better than the awful Lion that came with King Conan, ugh. I’ll definately be using the Lion that comes with Mythic Battles when that gets here. Now THAT is an amazing predator cat sculpture!!! I might also look into getting some better looking Wolves to use in this game. I mean, the ones from the Conan add-on are soooo bland, not the least bit threatening. Also, I can agree that perhaps it was just the casting and molding that was inferior for the Vanir Valkyrie. Her face in particular looks almost melted. Not wild about her pose, nor the fact that she towers over most other minis, including Conan. But, again, I’ve probably picked on that mini enough already... lol.

The Black Dragons are Conan’s personal guard during his time as King of Aquilonia, so they are most likely to be used as Allies for a player using King Conan. They could, however, be used in many cool ways by Hero players or the Overlord in home-brewed scenarios. So far, to my knowledge, Black Dragons are only used in one official scenario so far. I don’t believe that the Vanir Valkyrie is used in ANY official scenarios yet, but we can assume she will get one scenario eventually. Unless you have devised a good system for swapping out hero characters in existing scenarios (something that I’ve generally found difficult to do without radically affecting the game balance for any given scenario), or you enjoy creating your own scenarios, she isn’t terribly useful as of yet. And again, her sculpt is very poor I feel (maybe the worst in the game?). I went all-in on this game during the first KickStarter and felt that at $12 she was overpriced. If you plan to pay eBay prices for her.... well, I’ve said my opinion enough about her!.... :) The wolves of course do have one scenario using the core set, and a couple in the Nordheim expansion. So they could be a useful item. All in all the whole game and all the add-ons are great, so you can’t go wrong.

You really have two things to consider in my opinion: 1) quality of the miniatures. 2) usefulness of the miniatures in the game. Frankly, there aren’t that many official scenarios for any of these add-ons yet. If you own Nordheim you might want the Wolves since they are used in a couple scenarios for that expansion (and also one for the base game). However, the wolves have a very very boring and un-dynamic sculpture (IMO). I was definitely disappointed with them... The Vanir Valkyrie (Red Sonja), is also a crappy sculpture, out of proportion and totally lacking in detail (again, just my opinion). She is a playable character, so, that is perhaps a bonus - especially if you like to write your own scenarios. I like the Black Dragons, they are a cool sculpt and I’d imagine that there will eventually be plenty of official (1 so far) and non-official scenarios to use them. I also really like the Demon of the Earth, cool sculpt and plenty of game potential. The Sabretooth Tiger and Baal have a scenario apiece yet are both kinda ‘meh sculpts... Baal has slightly more appeal just because he is an actual character from the original REH, even though his sculpt is cartoony and doesn’t really fit well with the rest of the game.

Nice work NQD!! Great color choices and detail...

I agree with with both Bawon and Matt on this. He’s probably not metallic looking, but you should feel free to do whatever you want with your minis. I’ve seen some absolutely amazing Khel minis that were done in a metallic hue. I went with a mottled flesh color, so mine looks kinda like a zombie. :/ Not thrilled with my fairly sloppy effort, and I’ve pondered stripping him and trying again... I’ll post up mine in the painting section shortly.